* The "Point in Time" count is a snapshot of the number of homeless people on Cape Cod and the Islands. It is impossible to get a complete and accurate number of how many people are actually homeless on the Cape by counting for just one day.

SALEM — By mid-morning Thursday, residents of Lifebridge began to filter back into the building and out of the whipping snow on Margin Street.

While some simply sat in the high-ceilinged cafeteria socializing and waiting for lunch, other members of the North Shore homeless services facility joined a knitting group, visited with the in-house nurse or finished chores. Next door a resident worked on her knitting in a common room at Lifebridge's transitional housing, and a few blocks away members combed through the latest donations at the organization's thrift shop.

Kitchen manager Karen Andrew prepared meals for lunch with food contributed by businesses and the Boston Food Bank, or harvested from a garden outside now covered in snow but tended by residents during the growing season.

The Lifebridge model has caught the eye and imagination of Cape Cod officials who have long debated what to do about the large homeless population in Hyannis and at the NOAH emergency overnight shelter on Winter Street. Although the number of homeless counted during a survey of the Cape and Islands each January dropped by about half between 2005 and 2010, it has remained steady at about 500 since then.

While business leaders have pushed the police to keep a small group of troublemakers away from their storefronts, advocates for the homeless have fought to maintain services they say can save lives of well-meaning people down on their luck. Efforts to find common ground between the two sides (or three sides, if the police are counted separately) have inevitably faltered, until now.

"I don't think the business community thought we were sympathetic with their needs, and I don't think we thought the business community was sympathetic to our needs," said Rick Presbrey, CEO of Housing Assistance Corp.

But when Elizabeth Wurfbain heard about the success of day programs, she brought the idea back to a committee meeting to address problems on Main Street in Hyannis. The idea sparked interest in trying it here.

Wurfbain, executive director of the Hyannis Main Street Business Improvement District, said when she looked for a model, Lifebridge in Salem fit the bill.

Wurfbain and Barnstable Police Chief Paul MacDonald visited Lifebridge in November. A larger group representing service providers, the town and housing advocates went in December.

"What I like about Salem is, it's a crystal-clear model," Wurfbain said. "It's not just the day center."

Cape Cod Times video: Lifebridge homeless center in Salem

The model aligns with a trend away from the "three hots and a cot" standard through its campus approach to providing services (including classes through Salem State University), accountability and collaboration with police, Wurfbain and Etheridge said.

"It's an opportunity for a homeless person to end their homelessness," Etheridge said.

A Lifebridge member signs an agreement with the case manager laying out rules and goals that he or she must pursue or meet to continue in the program, Etheridge said.

"We expect you to be compliant," he said.

If interested homeless people are on drugs or alcohol, they can stay the night upstairs in the cafeteria so an evaluation can take place to see if Lifebridge is right for them, or another service provider can be found for them in the community, he said.

"We try really hard not to turn anyone away," he said, adding, however, that continued substance abuse and violence are not tolerated.

Everyone has chores to do and there are required house meetings.

"Unlike some of the other shelter models, there really is a sense of community here," Etheridge said. "Everybody knows everybody."

Lifebridge's open-door policy was evident last week as residents, volunteers and staff came and went freely. At one point, police officers arrived to talk over some issues with staff, but their presence hardly seemed to register with the residents.

Eric, 55, who asked that his last name not be used, said he has been at Lifebridge for a year and a half. Although drug- and alcohol-free for five years, he had fallen on hard times because of medical problems and difficulty in caring for an alcoholic parent with Alzheimer's disease, Eric said.

Finding a job at his age has been difficult even with a master's degree, but Lifebridge has given him the chance to take more classes and even write a term paper on employing the homeless, Eric said.

"Lifebridge helps people who help themselves," he said. "My immediate goal is to get housing."

Mark Cote, an adjunct faculty member at Salem State who spearheaded the development of Lifebridge and was its executive director until recently, said the idea is to provide a continuum of movement through many phases that ultimately end homelessness for the individual.

In rebranding the former Salem Mission as Lifebridge in 2010, Cote said, he eventually replaced all the staff and even pushed at least one resident who was clearly using the shelter as a permanent home to move on.

In 2007 Lifebridge opened 22 transitional housing units, on either side of the building where the night shelter and day programs are, but only nine people initially met the criteria to move in, Cote said.

"We really drew lines," Cote said about the overall requirements for participation at Lifebridge. "If you want to be here, you have to be ready to engage in ending your homelessness."

Lifebridge is a nonprofit organization run on a for-profit model, with expectations of outcomes and metrics, Cote said.

"People who are philanthropic today — they want outcomes," he said.

Cote said he was able to get the staff and Lifebridge's board of directors on board, but forgot initially to involve the clients.

"Once they bought into it, we really got into a rhythm," he said.

The results: moving about one person a week out of homelessness, Cote said.

In February of this year that number was even higher, with eight people moved out of homelessness, Etheridge said. There have been four in March already who have made the transition, he said.

For Presbrey and other service providers, one of the big hurdles will be figuring how to fund a similar approach in place of NOAH, which is the Cape's primary emergency overnight shelter.

"Yes, we will need some more money to hire more staff," Presbrey said about even a short-term plan that includes opening the NOAH shelter for a few extra hours.

Lifebridge costs $1.2 million a year to run, half of which comes from state Department of Housing and Community Development and other public funding, and half which comes from private fundraising, including revenue from its thrift shop, he said.

In addition, clients are allowed to take whatever they need that is donated to the thrift shop.

There are 50 beds at NOAH, almost all of which are taken each night, according to Presbrey. In the basement of Lifebridge there are that many beds during the winter but only 36 during the summer, Etheridge said.

There was pushback from a small group of vocal neighbors, but by working with police, problems were limited, Cote said.

"Once you confront rumor with reality, things just kind of quiet down," he said.

Housing Assistance Corp., which runs the NOAH shelter, is trying to open it for a few more hours during the day and on the weekends, said Presbrey and Heidi Nelson, CEO of Duffy Health Center, which has led a group called the Community Consortium to address the chronically homeless.

Short-term goals for filling some of the gaps include extending NOAH's hours and expanding from two to seven days a week in summertime the two-hour coffeehouse hosted at The Federated Church on Main Street by Vinfen, a Boston-based nonprofit organization contracted by the state to provide services for people with mental illness, Nelson said.

The coffeehouse has seen 250 individuals and 1,600 visits over the nine months since it opened, said Vinfen's homeless outreach director, Gene Carey.

"It's really a place for street people to come in and have a bit of relief from the street," Nelson said.

Duffy also plans to redeploy some case managers to the street during the summer, Nelson said.

Long-term goals include developing a budget and a comprehensive vision of something similar to Lifebridge, she said.

The idea of a day center for the homeless serves two primary purposes: It gives them a safe place to be during the day and it is a convenient location for case managers and other people in the community to find those in need of services, Nelson said.

Nelson and others say the variety of groups involved in the discussion is encouraging, including town officials, longtime housing advocates and the police.

"The real discussion is to make sure that all of the stakeholders are here at the table discussing this," said Barnstable Assistant Town Manager Mark Ells.

Alan Burt, a vocal advocate for the homeless, said he is encouraged by the new direction but wants it to be clear that the creation of affordable housing must play an important role in the effort.

In addition, the chronically homeless inevitably have mental health and substance abuse problems to contend with, and there is a shortage of halfway houses, Burt said.

"It sounds really promising," he said about the Lifebridge model. "Hopefully it gets beyond the words."

Paul Hebert, a recently elected Barnstable town councilor and founder of CHAMP Homes, which uses many of the same tools as the Lifebridge model at its School Street campus, said he too is encouraged.

"There's a political will to address this situation," Hebert said. "A lot of people said just ignore the problem and it will go away. Now we're living in truth, and reality that says these are our fellow citizens who have come across difficult times."

While the interactions among the homeless, police and businesses on Main Street in Hyannis are much better than they used to be, a day center would take things to another level, Barnstable Police Chief MacDonald said.

Police in Salem have a "community impact unit," which includes three officers tasked primarily with addressing quality-of-life concerns, including the homeless, according to MacDonald and Salem Police Chief Paul Tucker.

Tucker, whose station is a five-minute walk from Lifebridge, said although there are sometimes problems with Lifebridge's location near downtown, the cooperation between police and Lifebridge officials makes them easier to address.

Police are welcome at Lifebridge and have even been asked to bring in their dogs to make sure there are no drugs on the premises, he said.

"That was extraordinary," he said.

The negative interactions between police and the homeless have been reduced greatly because of Lifebridge, he said.

Recently, his community impact unit was awarded a grant of $135,000 over three years to have a clinician travel with the officers to bring services to the people they encounter, Tucker said.

"Rather than arrest our way out of it, which is impossible, we're trying to get services to them," he said.

The first key to setting up such a unit is to put the right people in the position, Tucker said, adding that not every police officer is interested in that type of work.

MacDonald has already dedicated three officers to a similar unit that will walk the Main Street area, he said.

"We're trying to make this problem smaller, not increase it," MacDonald said about concerns that a new facility might attract more homeless to Hyannis. "The whole burden of this homeless problem for Southeastern Massachusetts has really been borne by downtown Hyannis."

Presbrey said his staff is already training with police officers so that they understand each other's jobs.

The keys to the Lifebridge model, according to MacDonald and Wurfbain, are the day services, zero tolerance for breaking the rules, accountability and outreach.

"We have tried everything," MacDonald said. "We owe this to the community."